Can I Write-Off My Shoes? - Tax Write Offs and Expenses for Attorneys

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhardt.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. And today we're going to have probably a very story-laden conversation about attorney expenses. And we've labeled this one, can I write off my shoes? So we're just going to go through some stories and some, questions that we've had from our clients that will ask us to write off some fun things. And I actually have a new story, but it's not with an attorney. But I will definitely— it's— well, it was interesting. So—

You gotta tell us.

It was interesting. All right, so I'll tell you. I'll start it off. So I was working at a client's office and I get this credit card statement and I looked and it said the Botox Bar, $225, $235. And I'm like, And this is not a client that's in like the, an industry like you were in. This is a decorator. Yeah, but she said it's a client gift and I'm like, no, I'm calling on the BS meter on that one. That's not a client gift. I know where that went. But we also see, I also see that like new furniture comes into the house and we call it a gallery. So we, we run into this as bookkeepers and accountants. That we get these questions.

Yeah.

I have one that wanted to write off their hair, getting haircut.

Haircuts.

Yeah. Yep. And I, they said, why can't, why is this in my distributions? Why is it here? And I said, well, you can't write off your haircut. Why can't I? I need it for court.

That's a common, a common thing. Common thing.

And you need it for life.

No.

And of course the shoes one, I had the same conversation. It was actually about a suit. Can I write my suit off? I only wear my suits to court. And the rule about that has to— it, it, I've had this when I work with yoga teachers, it has to be branded and labeled. And, and so a suit's not gonna fall into that because my answer back, sour nose, you wear that suit to a funeral or a wedding? Well, yeah, then it can't write it off.

So, and if it's branded and labeled, it's advertising.

And correct. But nobody's going to brand and label a suit, right?

Correct. Um, maybe their tie.

They may— yoga, yoga teachers could wear like a uniform if they're at a studio and they're required to wear that, then the—

Like a branded, a brand. The way I think of it is if you've brand— like you have, there are people that make nice jackets. We see them, they're branded on the sleeves. Yeah, it is like a uniform. It's a way of advertising.

And yeah, I have a devil's advocate for that. So what about, what about these great big law firms, like personal injury, a giant, a giant personal injury law firm that requires— I've seen it where they require their attorney to— everybody has to wear a name tag of who they are. What about that?

You can write the name tag off, the cost of the name tag.

But not the— I agree, not the suit or the dress or the whatever.

Okay, I have one for you. What if my home office, I'm not going to, it's maybe this is not an attorney, but just kind of as the story portion, my home office and I have a 3/4 acre of just a bunch of grass. Can I get a lawnmower to maintain it? And that would be part of my maintenance of—

Building, building maintenance. Hmm, that's interesting. But do you work? Do you work outside in that yard?

No, but— and clients don't come visit me, but it's my home office, and I wanna—

Want it to be presentable, but clients don't visit you.

Yeah, yeah.

No.

Oh, look. Okay.

Lynda says—

No, yeah, I have, you know, we have heard of where folks— but you, again, this is a personal decision too. You have a home office, you need a presentable walkable space on the landscape, let's say, or it's a little bit of improvements. There are a portion of it that could be attributed. But then again, you're— as in the world of what you're doing personally, are you wanting to have those deductions come onto your personal for you to only pay all of that back when you sell or any of that nature? So These are, I mean, you have to—

Wait, wait, wait, let's talk about that a little bit.

Yeah.

What you just said. So go back to selling it later.

Well, you depreciated a portion, a portion.

Right.

And Lynda could speak to this. You have to, that is something that—

You gotta put it back in, you gotta recapture it at the time.

Recapture it, you gotta take your gains on it.

Yeah, because you've got a lot of experience, Lynda, in real estate.

Yeah, yeah, the recapture—

Oh, I didn't think of that, okay.

Depreciation gets put back in, so you, Yes, it's a problem because then you get taxed on it. It's just during the tax time you get to write it down, write it down, write it down. Then you hit the max, you hit the ceiling that you've written it all down. And then if you sell the property now, you got to put it all back in. So, and then it's taxable. I think, well, I've had people trying to get—

There are people walking outside my window.

Sorry.

That's okay.

You can be back there. Wait, wait, let's intermission for a minute. Just really quick. Where are you?

I'm at the Airstream Colorado Airstream Club Maintenance Rally in Larkspur, Colorado.

Nice. Nice.

Yeah. At the, the Yogi Bear Jellystone Resort.

Jellystone. Oh my gosh.

Oh my gosh. So if, so if you're visiting Yogi Bear and you have some business to—

and Boo Boo too.

Well, I'm living, I might, my trailer is on Cindy Bear Lane.

So, well, okay, so here's a tricky one. We see this in law, the golf tournaments, the charity.

Oh my gosh, yes, the golf tournaments and the charitable ones, or buying, buying, uh, the entry fees to those tickets, tickets to football events and things.

Well, that's entertainment. Those, those tickets are entertaining.

You don't get that anymore.

I don't get that anymore. Gone. But the, the But the, what I'm getting to is the charity ones. There's the entry fee and—

So many of them, so many of them, they, they take their buddies out for golf. I'm sorry, I interrupted, but they take their friends out for, I get passionate about this one. They take all their friends for an annual golf tournament and they, they banner it under the law firm and it's like, wait a minute.

Yeah, but it's so, excuse me, it's entertainment. I would think on the—

On the golf part.

On the golf part. The charitable part is if you are actually, are you doing a charity sponsorship? That's kind of in an advertisement, really.

Kinda, yeah.

I think. But if you're doing a charitable donation because of what it's, that's a donation.

And Sarah, can you speak to gifts a little bit? Because the $235 Botox bar, it's well over the gift threshold.

Oh, the gift thing is an old one. It's only what, $20, $25? That's it.

Yeah.

So are you, I mean, I would be like you, Lynda Artesani. I'm sorry, this will go for a quite, like the tax person can, I mean, you can't, you have to think of legitimacy. You are, ultimately it's your responsibility. You're telling us where to code it. We're not robots, we're smart. We're not doing it that way. There needs to be a bigger— then there's the compliance side. A tax professional also has the ethics side of all of this stuff that they have to. So we work to that. I don't care that they have to— they're beholden by it. We work to it because it's important for us as business owners ourselves. And I really, frankly, you really have to make sure, like, if you're going to— we have a client that does some gifts, but they brand them.

And they give them.

Exactly.

So they were expensive gifts, but they were branded and they were into, they met the criteria for that individual for the tax side to say okay to, and there was enough documentation, then that's fine. That's part of advertising and marketing.

We have a client who does the golf tournament and they put all the winnings into a pot and then split it amongst themselves. See, Lynda, yeah, that one bothers me every year. Because they're just playing to—

Yeah.

Recreation and splitting the pot.

Yeah.

But they run it through the firm and it's so—

And then you put it in their distribution and at the end of the year you're going to have this conversation about, well, and you're arguing, they're arguing with us their case of why it should be a business expense and it isn't. And you sometimes have to pull that code out of the IRS website and say, Here is the one thing great about working with attorneys is they're very highly intelligent. So here, Mr. and Mrs. Attorney, read this. This is what the IRS says. I'm not— I would love to give it to you.

Right.

It's not me, it's them. And just it's an education piece because sometimes they just don't realize. I think a lot of them don't realize that when they have a meal, a lot of client meals are another place that are sticky because getting like a $7 Starbucks order, which is one coffee, that is not a client coffee. Right? We know, we know exactly that it's— there's no way that 2 people had coffee for $7 at Starbucks. So—

But can I ask you though, sometimes people do this, they show up for a meeting and I pay my own and they pay their own. The, the actual moment is an actual meeting.

Okay, here's devil's advocate. And you reminded me of one of my clients, our clients. She would go to this restaurant every morning and have her breakfast and coffee and review her books and want to write that off. Go, Jerry. Go, Jerry.

Tell me, tell me. That leads me in. I don't know how to do that, but that leads me into—

Write off her breakfast.

Yeah.

That leads me into—

Her office is too small.

Oh, please. That leads me into a question I have for both of you, because I do see this coming or it changes, uh, abound somehow. You travel, you, you, you work, but you're, you're traveling, right? And depending on how many days you're in one place, what does that look like? Because states are starting to change their compliance. States are starting to put their hand out for money for employees, right? Things are going to get, I feel like, a little bit harder.

You know, you're right. The states are probably losing a lot of money because of contract workers after COVID.

And not so much contract workers, it's like W-2, wait, W-2, you know what I mean? But so, but that's the thing, it's like, so when you think about like, okay, I want to go and, and spend 6 months in Florida and then I want to come back, I am a two-state person at that point, you know what I mean? Like It just, it's hard. And maybe I'm renting a place there, but it's also benefit. Like there's so many things. We're in a global community, so this is getting even harder.

Well, and there's so many states that have reciprocity and states that don't.

You're right, Steve. Yeah.

Oh my goodness. Yeah. You brought up a really good one.

Yeah. I, I think we need a, a really good tax professional on.

Yeah.

Several that we could you know, just talk to these questions. But obviously they're not your— I mean, these are all our questions. This is how we would handle it. This is not our advice on having you go back to your bookkeeper, accounting professional, and your tax person. Please don't do that.

We've also had it where people buy a car and they're like, why is that asset not on my books? Well, did the business buy the car? Oh no, I put it in my own name. Well, if it's in your own name, that's not held by the business. I can't make it a business asset if you own the car personally.

What if they wrap the car with advertising for their firm?

Yeah, well, that, that would be— well, they still have to have it titled in the—

I still feel that that would have to be titled in the business. Well, I think that's a big conversation though, to have with the tax professional, because depending on different professions, Mm-hmm. You, no matter what, you still follow the rule of the mileage tracking.

Yeah.

Even if you take mileage or the car is owned outright, you still have the, you have to track the mileage and the percentage of business use versus personal use in the vehicle. But to your point, Lynda Artesani, it gets murkier and it's harder because for us it's easier. The business has an asset. That's the business asset. It's insured. Yeah, you pay a little extra, but there are some professions where it's not like that, and you have to go through a different type of cadence with the tax professional to help understand what does that look like.

And I've had clients tell me, well, I got the— I wanted a loan in my own name because I couldn't get it in the business name. So yeah, I, you know, I— and the loan rate was way better. That if you're audited, that doesn't matter. You have to title it in the business. And I've I have a YouTube video that's ancient. I think I even redid it where it's about how to book that transaction and when they do buy a vehicle. And I've had arguments with people on YouTube about, well, it's not in my, it's in my personal name. And I tell them like, this is what it says. You can't, you can't put it in the business, but they just wanna argue the fact. And I'm like, look, you wanna take the chance, that's up to you.

I'm just— I've met some professions where it isn't and they're able to do it, but there's exact use cases to support that for that tax person to make those—

And they can qualify it on the weekend. So if they're using it at home, they're driving, there's rules around like they'll take the weekend piece out too. If they're using it on the weekend, they're not working on the weekend, but they're using the same vehicle at home for other uses. This is where it gets to be a really great—

Well, you need a 2-car. So one qualifier is a 2-car to your point. But also we live now in an age where you're not a 9 to 5 Monday through Friday anymore. People work when they want and how they want.

Well, that's true.

That's the other thing. But yeah, to your point, I mean, to challenge that a little bit is just to say, like, what else do you have? Another vehicle in your home?

I actually lived through an audit where this came up. Yeah. So I know what they told me were the rules. And this is going back to probably the maybe the '90s, and, you know, the rule about it, and it was titled improperly, and they wanted to just discount it. They discounted all the expenses on it, which were thousands of dollars. It was just a mess, and the client had to—

Well, don't you find it even more confusing too, is for those personal use ones, you're doing mileage or expenses? Well, if you're doing expenses, friends, it constitutes fuel, constitutes—

You can't do both though. You can't do both. They think they can do both.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's the confusion.

What about a car wash?

Repairs and maintenance, but—

Yeah, that gets covered, right? That's covered.

Well, if it's repairs and maintenance, but see, mileage covers those things if you're doing the mileage one. If it's a business-owned vehicle, then that's repairs and maintenance on an asset of the company.

Yeah.

That got us all quiet, didn't it?

It's funny, I just have to think about the lens. I feel like, and also I always have to consult the tax professional I'm with.

I was going to say that you've got to have a good friend that's a CPA tax professional.

Or that client's tax professional, because no matter what, I don't, we don't know, I should say in the group of us, we don't know the full picture. We don't know what the other side is, the personal side.

And our job is to be protecting our client in the bookkeeping realm.

In the business side.

Yeah.

Right.

And to tell them, this is what I think, but we need to go that next step and talk to the tax professional about this and get their way. And their decision is final. And be grateful that I'm asking this question and trying to guide you along. We're not here to make your life more miserable.

Yeah, yeah, you know, if just because you shopped and got a beautiful Prada bag or shoes, a lot of money on it. Yeah, that will become part of the conversation about what about expenses, my luggage for traveling, Lynda Artesani. But you travel other places. That's the problem with the luggage.

Yes, I agree, Sarah.

Our luggage should definitely be written off.

It's got to match at least.

I mean, it's got to look good. Sarah always looks good with her luggage. She's got the most amazing luggage and Her luggage is almost the size of her with the stuff that she brings.

I was regretting my decision this last trip.

I should have brought my other luggage. I said, are you going to wear all those shoes? And she does.

If she put the Proper Trust logo on it.

She looks good. I'll just say that.

If I'd have to brand it, I don't want to brand it.

You don't want to brand your luggage?

Okay.

No, no, no. I don't want to. I want to brand it with my name, not my— No. Yeah, these are interesting. So I think that ultimately though, how do you all feel? I feel like when we have questions about those types of expenses and we're asking it of the business owner, we want that back in writing to support where we had to put those on the books.

Oh yes.

And the documentation to support it. Do you agree with that or what do you think? Are there other things you do differently than that or?

Document, document, document. I agree.

Okay. Yeah. Lots of notes. Lots of notes. And then if they, if the, if the conversation comes up with the client and they say, no, I want it in there, you just take that copy of that email, stick it in the transaction in QuickBooks, and then just say here, you know, if it, because later on if they're in an audit, they go, I never told you to do that. Oh, what? Let's just see what the email says.

Yeah.

That saves you so much. So yeah, if you're, in that accounting space where you're taking care of records, the more you document, the better. Because you're not going to remember a conversation that happened 3 years ago. You know, it's just not— it's not easy to remember. You might remember the Gucci bag or whatever, but you might not remember it down the road. And just pull it up and you have a copy of it. And it's just— it's definitely more notes the better, even on any transaction. It doesn't have to just be on expenses.

So what about on the ethical side? If you are feeling pressure How do you both handle that? Like if you're really getting pressed for it to put it in where they want it to.

Well, to Lynda's point, I mean, document like crazy, attach the documentation. I think bringing up the subject several times doesn't hurt in conversations. If you're doing a monthly review on the books, a quarterly review, an annual review, bringing that up again, saying, you know, We did what you said, we put it in this expense or whatever, but we still, we still feel very strongly that that's not where it belongs. And, and you, you know, in the event of an audit, we've attached this documentation. Being honest and forthright, there's nothing to hide. You know, it's not a confrontation.

No, but where I guess where I'm going with this is you, you are in a position where you're not in alignment. Right. It's not disagreement. You're just not in alignment. And I personally have— what I have done is I flag it, I document it, and include the tax professional on the conversation.

Mm-hmm.

So it's not me having the conversation alone, but ultimately, this is not, this is not an okay. I'm not— this doesn't make me comfortable. So due to that, I want to ultimately go to somebody who has that knowledge.

And if you have that client that's kind of pushing you to do things that aren't right— Sarah, we fired a client because they were completely out of compliance. And we tried. It's not like we just went, oh, you're out of compliance, we're out of here. We tried. We tried to redirect. We tried to show them what the bar says. We tried to do every bit that was required of us. And it just became a point where we're like, What are we gonna do? You know, and we don't wanna lose a client. We like the person.

That's what hurts when you have to do that.

I mean— When you like 'em, but they're not gonna, they're just gonna direct you to do something that you know is wrong. I mean, I don't know our responsibility where it lies when it comes to like a trust audit or anything like that, especially when I'm talking about trust compliance. But you just have to just say, I, yeah, I'm gone. I can't, let 'em know why you're leaving.

Lynda, you— we, we both know this from our friend who said there is some compliance on our side, right?

That's right, there is some.

So that's why we have to guard ourselves so deeply and quickly, because— and, and not just out of protection for ourselves, but if you're not taking the advice in the direction and you're always at this, uh, gray space, I guess you— I don't know what you call it. It's concerning, like you I can't live. I'm not willing to put my life and business on the line as a professional.

And if you're living in an unethical space, you don't want to work for a client like that. It's just not a great relationship overall. I had that happen years ago. I worked for a contractor, a GC, which was probably one of the worst jobs I ever had because he didn't have money and then he didn't pay people and they all called me, these vendors, these small vendors that were subcontractors. They needed their money. He didn't have his money. They didn't get paid. And it was this really terrible job that I had. The prior bookkeeper had— they had purchased a truck and they paid $100,000. It was a big, big dump truck.

Uh-huh.

They had no record keeping system. Their record keeping system was every year they would get a box and they would write a date on it for the year and they would just throw everything in the box. So, oh, 1999, they kept throwing everything in the box. So I stepped into this job very briefly and they got audited by the Rhode Island sales tax. Oh, the kid came in, he was probably 20 years old, fresh out of— maybe fresh.

So hard.

He was so young. And the client said, there's a room over there. Just give him a room and give him the documents they require. So I asked, I don't know anything. I just started, like literally started the job and then very next day this audit happens, which is probably why the other bookkeeper left.

Yeah.

And I said, where's the records? And he opened up this room and there were boxes on from Florida Seal, this business that had been around for years. And it was every year, like from 1920 straight through with box just had the date on it. So I pulled the box down for the year they were auditing and it was a pile of papers. And I said to the kid, You want a coffee? Here's your room. Here's your box. And the kids sat in that room and went through every piece of paper. And lo and behold, there was— and I'm nervous, right? I don't know. I'm nervous just because it's an audit.

Yeah.

And the guy came over to me and he brings paper out and he goes, do you know what this is? And he knew I hadn't been there. And I said, what is it? I said, oh, it looks like a bill of sale for a dump truck. And it said $10,000 bill of sale. And beneath that was the real bill of sale for $100,000. So they didn't—

Oh, wow.

—taxes on the $100,000, and the dumb-dumb stapled them all together, like, and it was in the box somewhere in that box. And I'm like, I don't know anything about this. And the owner came and he looked at it and he goes, what's the fine? I don't think—

Just like that, just 3 nights I got caught.

3 nights I didn't sleep, and this was like, what's the fine? Um, then we also had another one where the guy was— I was working for a remodeling company, and the client had a situation with the IRS where it was a pizza parlor, and they got caught paying cash for things because cash coming in. And I think he was paying for it. He was taking cash. He didn't have enough sales for the volume of flour he was buying. So the audit happened, and The IRS found that this was like, there was a huge discrepancy, way too much flour being purchased because they purchased it with like credit or checks and not enough sales. Where, where are you? Where is all this flour? You're not— Where's the flour going? Selling, right? It was easy. And the guy ended up getting caught. This tax guy took care of the situation. His tax professional handled the whole audit, unlike my guy that gave him a room and let him have his way with it.

Yeah.

And the, they said, this is the fine. And they, they, you know, you were caught. This is the amount of money you owe the state of Rhode Island. And the guy sat there and he opened up the checkbook, wrote a check, handed it to the IRS guy. And the guy looked at him. It was like a huge number. And he looked at him, he goes, and he signed all the papers, gave him the check. And he said, we didn't get it all, did we? And the guy goes, nope. Locked out because that closes the whole, the whole like 3 tax— Oh, wow. Any tax year prior to that is now closed. And then you know what happens? The guy ended up buying all the supplies with cash after that. So he paid his vendors with cash because it was a lot of cash business back in those days.

Well, now that's changing with currency, which goes, goes back to why we ask questions of like the Venmo usage. When we see our clients, attorneys, using Venmo. Oh, I hate Venmo. Business activity.

That makes me so nervous with attorneys.

Yeah.

And PayPal.

And PayPal, which I get it. Like, okay, for just on a business trip, it makes sense if somebody's paying and you Venmo back, but it's clear, concise, it's well written out, and it's something we would document. Like, I would screenshot that moment and have it in my books. When we're the ones trying to decipher this. And ultimately our goal is to support the business with the right information in the right categories. So—

I use Venmo to pay the hairdresser, the nail salon. Those are the places I use Venmo so I don't have to write a check. But I mean, that's personal, you know?

Yeah, yeah. We do see the— Yeah.

I wouldn't put it in my business. I don't know. For me, it just doesn't seem Right.

Okay, so we talked about the car being bought either personally or through the business. So I bought the car personally, I'm an attorney, I'm on the way to court and I have a car accident.

Hmm.

Let's talk about that. Where does that lie?

A personal car.

Yeah.

You're using it for, I mean, if you're doing the mileage thing, I mean, it's all, it's not the business's responsibility, it's personal.

So you're 100% on the hook for your insurance company and having the car repaired.

That's your—

Yeah. Oh, did something happen the other way for you at one point?

No, I'm like, wait, what?

We could have what-if scenarios all day on this. I mean, it's, you know, but who's responsible? I mean, my boss told me as an attorney to go to court. I have to do it. And I have a car wreck. Who's going to— who's responsible?

Well, but that— so you're doing a function of a job, but the car is not owned by the business.

Mm-hmm. Your personal vehicle— But your personal insurance would cover it.

Devil's advocate here. But it goes the other way too. That's my question the other way. It's a personal vehicle used for business, right? So your insurance stuff that goes on with that, I noticed the reason why this came up for me was I did get a questionnaire asking, is my personal vehicle used for business activity?

Oh.

And so I had to fill that out. Because we also, depending on, you know, what's stored in the vehicle for those moments of travel. Anyways, yeah, it's so murky sometimes and it's not other times.

We had, we had, I had one with a client that he, another contractor, and he had 2 employees that didn't show up to work to get on the bus, get in the trucks for the business. So they rushed to the job 'cause they were late. They rushed the job, they had a car accident on the way. And it fell into workers' comp insurance.

It did.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, the repair of the car did.

Everything, the whole, the accident, the whole accident, even though they weren't at the job, they missed going into the work, but they were on the way to the job and they were in their personal vehicle. Didn't matter, the insurance company had to cover it.

See, that's, that's, it goes back to what I was saying earlier. It, this is going to get harder.

It is.

To decipher because if we want to work, if we want to be moving around, if we're in a space where we want to move maybe city to city, internationally, not internationally, we want to experience different things, but that's our home base. That's a true thing. If we're employing people in other states, there's so many complexities to this. It's not, and I feel that our profession with all that's moving as fast-paced as it is and all that's moving on, it's devaluing the quality of this type of conversation and work and knowledge. And it's putting it into a metric of just you're pushing data in, it's going to go here, there, here, there. What's behind that though?

Yeah.

What validates it? And the— that's what concerns me about the missed opportunities and That's why it's really important, especially if you're a business that runs at a, you know, a certain financial tier too. I mean, small to big doesn't matter, but if you're running at a, say, a $1 million business, you really need to have some better processes in place and good questions and balance and checks on—

And if you have a lot of stuff in that doesn't belong, you're really not getting an accurate picture of how to run your business. If somebody—

Oh, you're not. —your business. Right, right, right.

It's gonna be a problem, right? So you're really inflating expenses. I, I don't know. To me, I need to sleep at night. So I have to make sure, like Sarah and I, everything's sort of straight and narrow. It's just things are part of doing business. We have this conversation with our clients all the time when it comes to merchant services. I had it yesterday and it's like, it's part of doing business. Add it in pricing. It—

Yeah.

We'll get paid faster If you have a less friction transaction, the link is there. It's like, click, who wouldn't pay that quicker? They see the email, they click, pay it.

Yeah.

In the old-fashioned way, you might get forgotten. The email gets stacked. So many reasons why it won't get paid. It comes down to, you wanna spend a lot of time collecting it and running and chasing it? That's your time's valuable. Can put a number on that. So I mean, it's, I think it's sometimes you have to kind of help the client see that mindset. Behind it.

The right picture. Yeah.

And then they'll say, I love when they turn around, they go, well, do you use the credit card? I'm like, yeah, yes, we do. Of course we do.

It's so well put, Lynda. This has been such a great conversation. I didn't expect it to go where it went, but that's the fun part of it.

So thank you, Joy, for suggesting the topic. Joy suggested the topic. It's great.

I have a suggestion too, because our lovely Tiara, when she takes us out, she gives links on how to find us. So if there's, if any of you out there have a specific situation that relates to this subject that we're talking about today, a scenario that you've got, you know, a conundrum going on with, you know, share it with us and we'll talk about it. And, you know, to your point a few minutes ago, Sarah, maybe we bring in a tax professional to answer some of those questions.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, it's just a, it's a high level because obviously they don't really know.

Right. Pick on the details.

Yeah. They don't know the details and that's kind of the space we're in. We're not giving advice in the sense of we're the professionals and licensed.

We're just telling you our experience and our stories.

Yeah. The word that you've been using all through this, how to decipher it, how to tear it apart and decipher it and figure it out.

Yeah. Well, and I love that, Steve. I do. If you have changed the names, let us share the story and have a moment where what would Sarah, Lynda, and Steve do?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, let's hear it. Well, okay, we're dropping like a hot potato. We're out the door. Or let's like unwind it or something. So— Absolutely.

Yeah.

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Bye. Thank you.